Policy, voting systems and collective power shape who participates in democracy. Feminists know: Fixing what’s broken requires changing the rules themselves.

Harpa, a concert hall and conference center in Reykjavík, Iceland. (Courtesy of the Reykjavík Global Forum)

It was 8 a.m. in Reykjavik, Iceland. As I walked along the harbor, the air felt crisp, steam rising from the water, covering the shoreline in a soft haze. Ahead of me, Harpa Hall glowed suffragist purple against the still-black sky—a quiet reminder that women have always gathered in the dark to build what comes next. From the moment I crossed the threshold of the conference hall, I felt the warmth that rises whenever women gather with purpose, and the energy of women from around the world arriving to confront the most pressing challenges of our time. Day 1 of the 2025 Reykjavík Global Forum on Women Leaders was about to begin.

Over the next 72 hours, I spoke with women leaders about democracy, leadership, activism and power-building. We talked about fear. About childcare. About boys who aren’t sure where they fit in this “new” world. About deadlines and death threats, ranked-choice voting—and the deeper reasons why they keep doing this work despite the challenges.

Amid those conversations, three interviews in particular stayed with me: Liz Berry, a Washington state representative who campaigned with a 6-week-old baby; Eliza Reid, Iceland’s former first lady and author of Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland’s Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World; and Alison Comyn, an Irish journalist-turned-senator from a country that’s used proportional representation—a form of ranked-choice voting—for generations.

Taken together, their stories sketch a kind of roadmap: how we change the rules, how we change ourselves and how we do this work together.

Changing the Rules so More Women Can Run

… There’s no one going through what I’m going through in my life serving right now. … I’m just gonna go for it.

Washington state Rep. Liz Berry

When Liz Berry decided to run for office in Washington state, she had a newborn, a toddler, and a question she couldn’t shake: Why wasn’t anyone who looked like her, or lived like her, running for the seat that had opened up in her community? With no one on the horizon who reflected her life or lived experiences, the solution became clear: She would have to be the one to step in. So she ran.

“I was always the woman behind the woman,” she told me, “helping behind the scenes. And then I looked around and thought, there’s no one going through what I’m going through in my life serving right now. … I’m just gonna go for it.”

But Berry’s story underscores a reality that too often gets distilled into feel-good rhetoric: “Going for it” as a mother of very young kids wasn’t made possible by a mindset shift alone. It was made possible by a systemic shift—a policy change that opened the gateway for her participation. One of the most quietly revolutionary reforms in Washington state is a rule allowing candidates to use campaign funds to pay for childcare.

Berry says it plainly: “Childcare is one of the biggest systemic barriers for women.”

Men rarely show up to candidate trainings asking how they’re supposed to afford childcare during evening fundraisers or weekend canvases. Women do.

Allowing childcare as a legitimate campaign expense doesn’t just make campaigns financially feasible, it sends a message: We expect you to be here, we want you to run. Your caregiving responsibilities aren’t a disqualifying condition. Providing for your children is part of your life, and we’re going to acknowledge that in law.

Now, Berry is pushing the system again, working to broaden the definition of a “campaign expense” to cover a different kind of need: safety.

“It has become really unsafe to put yourself in the public eye,” she says. She’s sponsoring legislation to allow candidates to use campaign and surplus funds to pay for home security. She’s clear that she hopes this will reach women who might otherwise think twice about running in an era of doxxing, threats and intimidation.

“I wish I had done it proactively instead of reactively,” she adds, hinting at the lived experience underneath the policy language.

Childcare and security. Time and safety. These aren’t perks—they’re the literal conditions of entry.

Put bluntly, if you can’t afford someone to watch your kids, and you can’t keep your family safe, you will not run—no matter how passionate, brilliant or “leaned in” you are.

When the Voting System Itself Opens the Door Wider

If Rep. Liz Berry is working at the level of rules that shape who can run, Sen. Alison Comyn is working inside a system that shapes who can actually win.

In Ireland, elections use what Americans would recognize as a form of ranked-choice voting—known there as proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PR-STV). Instead of checking a single box and walking away wondering if you’ve “wasted” your one precious vote on a long-shot candidate, voters rank their preferences: 1, 2, 3, so on.

“It’s an extremely fair system,” Comyn told me. “Every vote counts.”

She means this literally: When a candidate is eliminated, their votes transfer to the next preference on each ballot. When a candidate has more votes than they need to win, their surplus is redistributed too. She’s seen elections go to a 20th count, with single-digit margins triggering recounts.

Ranked-choice voting … allows voters to rank a candidate they love as their first choice and a more ‘establishment’ candidate second without feeling like they’ve thrown their voice away.

Comyn spent decades on the other side of the camera as a journalist, covering counts that stretched into the early morning. Eventually, she ran herself. She didn’t win her first race for a lower-house seat, but she was later appointed to the Seanad, Ireland’s upper house, where legislation is debated and shaped.

And she’s emphatic. Many people like her—women, independents, members of smaller parties—simply wouldn’t be in politics without PR-STV.

Ranked-choice voting, by design, rewards broad support and coalition-building rather than winner-take-all polarization. It allows voters to rank a candidate they love as their first choice and a more “establishment” candidate second without feeling like they’ve thrown their voice away. That alone creates more space for women, younger candidates and those outside traditional power networks to run and win.

For this very reason, Berry cosponsored legislation in Washington state this year that would enable the use of ranked-choice voting in the state.

“I really like ranked-choice voting because it leads to more collegial or friendly campaigning,” Berry said. “I think in this day and age, where there’s so much division in politics, it’s a great tool for asking candidates to look beyond what they’re in right now, what they’re feeling right now, and think about what could happen if they reach their hand out and say, ‘Hey, let’s work together.’”

Her sentiment raises a timely point for readers across the United States. We spend enormous energy urging women to run and building a pipeline of candidates, but the piping system they’re entering is clogged with barriers and distortions. It leaves us with a sharp question: What if part of advancing women’s representation isn’t just getting more women to step up, but about changing the way votes translate into power?

And power, as the women in Reykjavik kept reminding me, doesn’t just sit at the top; it’s within all of us.

Collective Power and Not Waiting for the Perfect Leader

It’s tempting, standing in Harpa Hall surrounded by women prime ministers and presidents, to assume the story of women’s political progress is the story of them—the ones on stage, the ones with the titles.

The Reykjavík Global Forum on Nov. 10-11, 2025. (Courtesy of the Reykjavík Global Forum)

Former First Lady Eliza Reid pushes hard against that instinct.

Yes, Iceland’s president hosted this forum on women’s leadership. Yes, the prime minister is a woman. Yes, Iceland regularly tops global gender-equality rankings year after year. But when I asked Reid what U.S. readers should learn from Iceland’s “extraordinary women,” she didn’t start with the headliners.

Instead, she talked about the “collective power of individuals.” She half-laughed as the phrase came out. She appeared almost amused she was coining it, but serious about what it means. 

“We can’t just have a trickle-down approach,” she says. “Even when we have these great women leaders … we don’t say, ‘Oh look, we have women leading in so many top positions, therefore I, who am not in one of those positions, don’t need to do anything.’”

Nor does she accept the opposite excuse—that if you aren’t officially in charge, your contribution is meaningless.

“We all have power and influence,” she insists, “no matter how small or how large.”

Reykjavík, Iceland. (Courtesy of the Reykjavík Global Forum)

As I left Harpa that day, her words struck me not only as an important reminder about building power, but also about resilience and what we can learn about enduring in this effort.

Resilience: Oxygen Masks, Social Media Breaks and Choosing Which Balls to Drop

The Reykjavik Global Forum brands itself around action. Panels end with “Action Points” on screens. Participants leave with “Action Packs.” But action without endurance is just a burst, not a movement.

So I asked each woman a version of the same question: How do you keep going? What does resilience actually look like for you?

Berry doesn’t romanticize it. The work, she says, “can be physically, emotionally and mentally taxing.”

Washington’s legislative session can run 105 consecutive days—“part-time” only on paper. In practice, it’s more like a high-intensity sprint, scattered weekends and 4 a.m. votes.

“It is a huge barrier to women,” she says, especially those with kids.

Her resilience practice mirrors her policy priorities: practical, honest, steady and rooted in reality. She takes real breaks. She steps away from social media altogether when she can (she was three weeks into a break when we spoke) and is unapologetic about what she might miss while she’s offline.

“Yes, I might miss someone’s birth announcement or a new job,” she shrugs. “Fine. I’ll hear about it through the grapevine anyway.” What she gains—time with her family, less exposure to “negativity and addiction,” the chance to read a book or go for a walk without a destination—is worth far more.

Reid, for her part, returns to the familiar airplane metaphor: Put your own oxygen mask on first. She’s acutely aware that advice about “self-care” can land differently depending on privilege as you can’t choose which balls to drop if the ball is housing, food or safety. But for those who can, she argues, resilience starts with intentionally accepting imperfection.

“We’re all going to drop a lot of balls,” she says. “We can’t do everything perfectly. In a dream world, we’d be able to choose which balls we’re going to drop, and then feel comfortable with that.” Maybe that means more screen time for the kids. Maybe a messier house. The point is to choose, instead of being suffocated by expectations you never consented to.

She also describes a tiny nightly ritual: Before falling asleep, she thinks about one thing she liked about the day, and one thing she’s looking forward to tomorrow. It doesn’t always happen (sometimes she just conks out) but when it does, it gently trains her attention toward what’s good and possible, even on hard days. It’s become a muscle for hope.

For Comyn, resilience is wrapped in generational messages that both empowered her. Her mother, not a self-identified feminist but a fierce encourager of women, always told her there was “no such word as ‘can’t.’”

Taken literally, that’s a recipe for burnout. But Comyn filtered it as a vote of confidence to try. If you fail, try again. Or try differently.

She’s had to draw on that grit in a political environment that can be vicious, especially online. As a female public representative, she receives serious abuse and threats “on a daily basis” for daring to speak out or express views outside someone’s preferred narrative. People often treat that as part of the job, as a cost of doing politics in the digital age. She rejects that entirely.

“You’re supposed to have Teflon skin,” she says. “But we can’t weaponize that to the point where it’s acceptable. It’s not acceptable to abuse people who are really trying hard to make changes in your country.”

Resilience, for her, isn’t thickening her skin until nothing gets through. It’s staying soft enough to care and stubborn enough not to be driven out.

So What Now? From Reykjavík to Your Street

The Reykjavík Global Forum loves its big numbers: 500 participants, 70 countries, countless panels, indices and initiatives. It’s easy to leave dazzled and secretly unsure what to do beyond posting a few inspiring quotes.

And if you’re reading this in the U.S., oceans away, with no childcare stipend and no ranked-choice voting in your district, it can feel even more distant.

But listen again to what these women are actually saying.

(Courtesy of the Reykjavík Global Forum)

Berry isn’t asking you to single-handedly rewrite your state constitution by Thursday. She asks you to look at the next election—really look—and ask two questions:

Could it be you? If your reflex is “absolutely not,” ask again. Then ask a trusted friend. Sometimes other people see our suitability for leadership long before we do.

If not you, then who—and how will you help her? Maybe you donate or host a house party. Perhaps you knock doors, text your network, or show up at a school board meeting and speak in support of the lone woman running against an entrenched incumbent. This is how women rise: not alone, but lifted by the hands and work of many.

Reid isn’t asking you to move to Iceland. She’s asking you to choose one small, consistent way to align your daily life with your values. This can be calling out a sexist joke at work, broadening the media you consume or teaching your sons to name their feelings.

And Comyn isn’t asking you to become an expert in Irish electoral law. She’s urging you to consider that if your voting system is “garbage,” as more than one American feminist has put it, you might start paying attention to reforms to fix it. If it’s broken—if it silences voices, suppresses choices or props up unrepresentative candidates every cycle—then reforms like ranked-choice voting and proportional representation aren’t niche policy ideas. They’re tools for justice.

She’s leaving us with the question: Could my city, state or party pilot a system where “every vote counts,” and more than two parties can breathe? And, if so, how can I help make that change a reality?

And then there’s the image I keep returning to: the steam rising off Reykjavik that morning. It wasn’t some grand symbolic omen. It was simply what happens when hot and cold meet and refuse to stay separate.

That’s what this moment can be, too: all our small acts, our everyday choices, colliding and warming each other, making it harder and harder for the old, frozen ways of doing politics to hold.